But still no time to celebrate. So much that could go wrong.
I grabbed the walkie-talkie. ‘Perfect hit. Pulled up into central reservation. Attempting to call Hao now.’
I got out the iPhone, and dialed Hao. And once again, as I put my eye to the optic, and examined the back of Hao and Minxin’s head (both of whom I had a clean aim at now, since they were a decent distance from the traffic), I willed the universe to work in my favor.
The call connected and the phone started ringing – a good start. Then, with another jab of relief, I saw Hao fumble around.
The ringing stopped and Hao held his phone to his ear.
‘Hello?’
I answered while pressing on the walkie-talkie’s button at the same time. Wanted Ellen to hear I’d made contact.
‘Listen, Cocksucker, I’ve got a sniper rifle aimed at your head—’
Hao immediately made as if to look out the window.
‘No,’ I hissed. ‘Act natural, or I’ll puncture your head like I did your wheel. Now, smile nicely and nod, as if everything’s perfectly normal.’
I paused, and though I couldn’t see his face, his head jerked up and down.
He was breathing heavy.
‘In a second, a friend of mine will pull up behind your car. You and Minxin will calmly get out the car and get into the back-seats of this new car. You’ll tell Minxin and your driver that this is a second driver that you had tail the car for security purposes. You’ll tell the driver that he must stay put, and that you’ll send someone for him. Do that now. And make it convincing, or so help me God—’
I let off, and Hao launched into his rendition. And though I could hear the fear in his voice, I reckoned he was doing an adequate enough job.
Halfway through his speech, Ellen pulled behind the Mercedes, perhaps twenty yards off.
She gave a half-second glance up towards me, then began staring down the Merc.
A few seconds later, Hao finished talking.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘I’m hanging up. Get to it.’
I terminated the call, and watched as Hao and Minxin – a tubby, supercilious-looking man, with a look of utter confusion – exited the car, and started towards Ellen’s.
Other vehicles were still paying little notice. But I was most worried about the driver. He seemed calm enough, but was watching things intently in his rear-view mirror. Even if he thought he’d just gotten unlucky, and had punctured his tire on some detritus, he clearly realized what was going on was unorthodox.
Ellen had to get the two men under control before the driver reacted.
On that thought, I made a decision: I had to leave right now if I wanted to be in the car with Ellen. Because I could tell by the way she was glancing at the driver that she also registered him as a potential threat – and would be considering leaving as soon as possible…
I reckoned the fact Hao would assume the sniper rifle was still aimed at him would be enough to keep him in line.
I snapped the rifle into pieces, jammed them into the case, and jumped into the driver’s seat. Then, with one more glimpse outside (Minxin and Hao climbing into the back, Ellen turning to face them), I jammed the keys in the ignition, and shot quickly out the spot. Next thing, I was wending my way through the labyrinthine concrete block. As I did so, I pictured Ellen calling the shots, and placing their hands in handcuffs. Pictured the driver in the Mercedes watching this unfold, and his curiosity and suspicion spiking.
Pictured the kids in the consulate, complete unaware that their lives hung by a thread.
Before I knew it, I was joining the northbound lane, and could make out both of the cars. And a few moments later, I was pulling up behind Ellen’s.
No sooner did I come to a stop – maybe five yards away from Ellen’s car – than the driver threw open his door and started scrambling out of the Merc.
No time to think.
I grabbed the sniper case, scrambled out of the car, and began sprinting. As I did so, the driver – who was already moving towards us – also broke into a run. And in the same moment, we made a brief, electrifying eye-contact.
But I had a huge advantage: I had a quarter of the distance to cover. And sure enough, by the time I hit Ellen’s passenger door, he was barely halfway. And then I was in the car, and the guy was still five yards off.
‘Go, go, go!’
Ellen smashed the gas, the driver jumped clear, and we swerved into the flow of traffic. And barely had we done so than I pulled out my Walther, and turned on the two men in the back. Both had their hands handcuffed before them.
‘Put a goddamn word out of place, and get a hole in the head.’
‘Do you know who I am?’ said Wu. Not haughty. Just shocked at the sheer audacity.
‘I couldn’t give a fuck. All I know is, if I put a bullet in your stomach, you’ll die a slow, painful death, like anyone else.’
The blood went from his face. I looked at Ellen. Her mouth was tight, eyes focused, hair meshed with sweat. She looked beat. And all at once, I became aware of my own muscles twitching and trembling with the trauma I’d put them through. And as I leaned back to open my lungs, I felt the agony of my broken rib.
It’d been tender this whole time. But I’d suppressed it – like turning a TV to mute.
I drank a few deep breaths. Once I’d regained some semblance of composure, I pulled out Scott’s iPhone, switched on airplane mode, took out the SIM and then turned it off. The driver would contact the authorities, who would be able to see Hao’s call-log, and see the number to Scott’s phone – meaning it had to be switched off. After this, I produced the walkie-talkie, flicked it to the frequency we’d found in Pockmark’s shoe, and touched my finger to the button.
But then, I stopped myself. Stopped because I realized that, since seeing Yuelin’s mug shot, I’d given very little thought about the person I was up against. And thus, very little thought about how best to handle her…
Yuelin Lie. As far as I knew, she wasn’t a psychopath: she was a fanatic. Of course, the two things weren’t mutually exclusive. But since she was motivated by an ideology – an ideology predicated on the supremacy of the Chinese, and the necessity to avenge past injustices – as opposed to a desire to simply make people suffer for suffering’s sake, it seemed fair to say that she was a fanatic.
But the thing about fanatics and psychopaths was that, often, the end-product’s the same. Psychopaths are unable to empathize with others. Fanatics, on the other hand, can; but they designate people who fall foul of their ideology as subhuman, meaning they find it impossible to empathize with them. So the upshot’s the same: a lack of empathy; a capacity to wreak suffering on other people as if they were no more than insects.
But whereas with psychopaths that’s the long and short of it, fanatics – because they can empathize – can be manipulated by threatening someone they value; which was the logic behind capturing Minxin Wu.
Yet though fanatics have this chink in the armor, I was aware, also, that they were in many ways more dangerous. More driven, committed, zealous. Because, unlike psychopaths, they truly believe they’re on the side of right, and as a result, will stop at nothing, will go to any lengths, to see their agenda through.
But though this distinction altered my approach, it didn’t alter my thirst for revenge. Yes, I understood her fanaticism was a mind-virus. But once you start not only targeting the most vulnerable people – the peaceful protestors, the defenseless kids – but also relishing in their deaths, you need to be snuffed out.
And this was a woman who’d tried to put a bullet in Ellen’s head. Who, failing that, had planned to kill both me and Ellen in the most painful way imaginable.
Suddenly – and almost involuntarily – I imagined myself tied up and thrown to the flames; imagined Ellen thrown in next to me, and watching her flesh scorch, and being powerless to do anything about it. And next thing I knew, my body was hot with rage, and I wanted Yuelin’s skull pressed beneath my boot.
; I quashed this surge of emotion. Calm was all-important. As Vann had pointed out, I’d learned that lesson enough times…
Another deep breath. Then, I pushed the button.
‘Yuelin Lie. This is Saul Marshall. I’ve got two hostages I think you’ll be interested in. So before you set off the detonator, I’d recommend you talk to me.’
* * *
I looked at Minxin. Just as I’d expected, he’d been completely in the dark about Yuelin’s activities: his face was pure shock.
A long silence. Then, just when I was about to try again, a voice. Yuelin’s.
‘I’m listening, Saul Marshall.’ Superficially, her voice was calm. But there was a quality to it – a seriousness and zealousness – that scared me. That elicited a primal reaction; a goose-pimpling of the flesh. And the intensity of this reaction caught me unawares.
Her frugality with words, at least, was expected. After all, she was concerned with deniability. And since she couldn’t see her audience, she had to tread lightly.
In films, these sorts of conversations are fireworks. But this was real-life. And she wasn’t concerned with talking a big game. She was concerned with the success of her mission.
I gripped the talkie harder. ‘It’s quite simple. I know you’re planning a fire at the Consulate, targeting the kids inside. My guess: you’ve got a remote detonator, it’ll provide a spark, and some tactically placed flammable materials will do the rest. All very clever, since the US authorities can’t get in to put it out.’
I paused. Yuelin said nothing. She was hearing me out.
I knew my best bet was to barter with Minxin’s life. But while I knew his life would carry weight, I knew I couldn’t overdo it. If I demanded the technology to crack the Dark Web as well as the detonator, Yuelin might simply decide the price was too steep, and sacrifice her cousin. What’s more, I’d be revealing what I knew.
I had to tread the path.
‘But since I have your cousin, I suggest we do a trade: Minxin for the detonator. I’d suggest a trade for the Consul instead, but I’m aware he has limited appeal: you have to assume I’ve already recorded a confession from him – regardless of whether I have or not – meaning that getting him back would be relatively pointless. Hence: Minxin.’
I released the button. I’d given some information away – namely, that I knew Hao had something to confess. But that didn’t tell Yuelin I knew about the Dark Net hack. After all, I could’ve inferred the fire plot independently, and simply found out from Hao that he’d been blackmailed. Yuelin replied:
‘If a detonator did exist, how would you know you’ve been given the real thing?’
She didn’t say this tauntingly. More as though pointing out a pit-fall. And it was a clever tactic, because she was hardly alerting me to something that hadn’t occurred to me already. Instead, it was a double-bluff. A tactic to get me to spill how I was intending to verify the detonator, so as to better enable her to pull the wool over my eyes.
But though she probably knew about my background by now, probably knew there was a decent chance I’d had bomb disposal training, I wasn’t going to elaborate. I felt fairly certain, given her penchant for radios, she’d be using a radio-controlled detonator. And if she was, I had tactics to tell whether the detonator was: a) connected to a live device; and b) thrown together at suspiciously short-notice.
‘I’ll know,’ I said simply. ‘And think long and hard before trying to fob me off with a phony; because so help me God, I won’t hesitate to put a bullet in Minxin’s bloated fucking face. I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the fallout – so long as I get those kids out of there.’
I let that sink in. I knew that her cousin’s life would mean a lot. Her ideology stated the primacy of Chinese people; so she was likely to consider the life of a high-powered Chinese dignitary, her cousin no less, to be gold-dust.
But her mission – the perpetration of this atrocity – was also valuable to her. And I had to hope the former outweighed the latter…
After a seemingly interminable wait:
‘We’ll make the swap. 1584 Miramontes Street, Half Moon Bay – thirty miles south of San Francisco. Be there ASAP. Any surprises, and…’ She paused. She didn’t want to be too explicit, and didn’t need to be. ‘And bring Kelden. I’m not open to negotiation. If you fall foul, the deal’s off, and I’m prepared to live with the consequences, however regrettable.’
She said this last bit with real strain in her voice. I knew that if push came to shove, she was willing to sacrifice Minxin. But she clearly found the prospect difficult to stomach.
But there was also deep hatred in her voice. Hatred for the interloper who was threatening to derail her best laid plans. Who’d slaughtered her brethren, and was threatening to kill her own flesh and blood.
I reveled in it. Wanted her to suffer. But while what I felt for her was real and intense, it wasn’t the same as the full-blown hatred she felt for me – it was a flash-in-the-pan disgust. And this made sense. After all, I’d effectively been slaughtering her family whereas, though she’d threatened to kill me under gruesome circumstances, her wider plans hadn’t sought to target me personally. As a result, she was still, in my estimation, no different from countless other scumbags I’d dealt with in the past. That is, she hadn’t earned my hatred.
And I knew this difference in outlooks gave me the upper-hand, because it meant I was more in control, more level-headed, more likely to make the right choices.
I said: ‘Fine. I’m remaining on this frequency. That is all.’
I lowered the talkie, took a deep breath. We were playing chicken. Leveling threats, seeing who blinked first. But though it was finely balanced, I reckoned this might actually come off, reckoned that a trade might actually be on the cards…
But then again, maybe not. The insistence on my bringing Ellen was deeply unnerving. Maybe this was a trap, and I had no prospect of freeing the protestors.
The image of them resurfaced in my mind. And all at once, I knew failure wasn’t an option. All at once, my disgust for Yuelin was eclipsed by an overwhelming urge to save these young lives.
Not just for their sake. But to repent. For everyone I’d ever failed.
* * *
When we arrived at 169 Stillman Street, Scott opened the roll-up door, and Ellen pulled in.
Scott led the way upstairs to the office spaces, and, as a temporary measure, we marched Minxin and Hao into a small windowless room.
In the hallway outside, I told Scott the situation. Told him about the meeting I’d organized with Yuelin. About her insisting I bring Ellen.
His response made my heart sink.
‘This is a suicide mission, Saul. Why have you bring Ellen along if not to try to eliminate you both?’
I groaned. It felt like the walls were closing in on all sides. But the situation was what it was. And I had to make it work.
Ellen, who’d been silently biting her lip, said:
‘Is there any way we can get a satellite view of the address Yuelin gave us?’
She said this stoically. But this small inquiry spoke volumes. Again she was making it clear she was willing to put her neck on the line for others.
She was in this for the long-haul.
Scott nodded. ‘SAIC moved their computers out. But there was a junker here when they moved in, and it’s still here. And though the place’s no longer in use, I think the Wi-Fi’s still running.’
He led the way into a separate office. It was completely bare, except for one old computer in the corner.
Scott turned it on, and though it was slow, and running a Jurassic operatic system, it worked. And after a few moments, Scott had connected to the Wi-Fi.
He typed in the address, and brought up a satellite image.
Half Moon Bay was a coastal settlement to the south of San Francisco; a surfer town, straight out of a Californian tourist board advert, and spread over six square miles.
The house in question, however, was on the very
eastern periphery of town. Miramontes Street ran from west to east, and though it was a residential street, it jutted out another third of a mile eastwards than any other road in town. And this last 700 yards was practically a dirt-track – at the end of which, after a last-minute bend in the road, was the house, 700 yards away from any other.
The house itself was nothing exceptional: a small, two-story structure. But the location made perfect sense as a safe house. It was tucked away, out-of-sight. And in broader terms, it was near enough to San Fran that Yuelin could be there at short notice, but also far enough away that, should San Fran go into lockdown, she’d be out of the danger zone.
‘Attempting this is madness,’ Scott said after a few minutes. ‘What if she has a sniper upstairs capable of carrying out a brain-stem shot? Then, even if you’re holding a gun to Wu’s head, they could take you out while sparing Wu.
‘And yes, Ellen could have a gun to Wu’s head as well. But for one thing, there may be two snipers. For another, you’ll have no leverage on your way out.’
Scott paused. ‘Saul, they’re planning to kill you. It’s that simple.’
I massaged my temples. It was true. The situation was impossible.
And yet Ellen was looking at me imploringly. And in my mind’s eye, so too were all those kids in the consulate…
It was the bottom of the ninth, and I needed to produce a miracle.
Then, suddenly, an insane idea flashed into my mind.
‘Saul?’ said Scott, registering the change in my expression.
‘Back in May 2007, I was given a mad job by the FBI’s Office of Intelligence. Four naturalized Americans from Lebanon were plotting an attack on Fort Dix.’ I was talking fast, words pouring. ‘I was put forward to infiltrate their group as an al-Qaeda contact – because we needed to catch them in the act of building a bomb. Eventually, they decided to do just that. So I organized a “safe-house” which was heavily bugged, and we started building bombs; started filling fifty-five-gallon oil drums with a mix of fuel oil and ammonium nitrate fertilizers: a classic recipe. Only, I couldn’t actually allow them to build real bombs. So I bluffed: I used Scotts Super Turf Builder – a fertilizer with zero explosive force.
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